Carole Malone On This Morning: Sparks Outrage Saying Derby House Fire Deaths Were An 'Accident Waiting To Happen'

18/05/2012 17:51
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Updated
22 May 2015

Keith Kendrick
Parentdish UK

A TV pundit has caused a storm of outrage after she said on television that the deaths of the six children in the Derby house fire was "an accident waiting to happen".

Carole Malone, who is also a newspaper columnist, said on ITV's This Morning: "There's a lot of resentment out there for families exactly like this, especially now, especially with the country in the state that it's in, there's not much money and people have seen families maybe like this one taking advantage."

Speaking the morning after the fire claimed its sixth victim, Duwayne Philpott, 13, she added: "This family became a target a couple of years ago and I suspect they have many enemies out there because they were seen to be on benefits, they were seen to be asking for a bigger council house and I think they upset a lot of people at the time."

Protestors at her comments took to Twitter to vent their fury. One said: "Carole Malone fails at empathy, sensitivity, decency and humanity. 6 children burned to death. Stem your hatred for a few minutes."

One YouTube, user wrote: "This is despicable! No one, whether rich or poor, employed or unemployed deserves to lose a child, let alone 6! This "person", I use the term loosely as any normal thinking person would think 'Is this comment going to hurt people that are grieving?', is abhorrent."

But some people agreed with Ms Malone. One writer, from Leeds, said: "I can't help but think that Carole Malone might be right about the comments she made on @itvthismorning."

ITV was quick to distance themselves from their sofa pundit's comments.

"The views expressed in the This Morning newspaper review on Monday were those of Carol Malone and not shared by ITV or This Morning," said a spokesman.

"Our thoughts are with the family and all those affected by this tragedy at this difficult time."